Therefore, I say, Be honest and brave for God's sake. And in this
way, my friends, all may be brave, all may be noble. Speak the
truth, and do your duty, because it is the will of God. Poor, weak
women, people without scholarship, cleverness, power, may live
glorious lives, and die glorious deaths, and God's strength may be
made perfect in their weakness. They may live, did I say? I may
say they have lived, and have died, already, by thousands. When we
read the stories of the old martyrs who, in the heathen persecution,
died like heroes rather than deny Christ, and scorned to save
themselves by telling what they knew to be a lie, but preferred
truth to all that makes life worth having:--how many of them--I may
say the greater part of them--were poor creatures enough in the eyes
of man, though they were rich enough, noble enough, in the eyes of
God who inspired them. 'Few rich and few noble,' as the apostle
says, 'were called.' It was to poor people, old people, weak women,
ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the
torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the
scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul
their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the
idols which they knew were nothing, and worth nothing.
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